YMMV / Going Overboard

• Awesome Music: "Girlie Girlie" by Sophia George. It's used repeatedly throughout the film, and it really isn't hard to see why.
• Designated Hero: We're supposed to root for Shecky in his quest to become a comedian, despite every indication that he has no talent for it whatsoever.
• Designated Love Interest: It initially seems like Miss Australia is going to be a love interest for Shecky, as he spends a lot of the film chasing after her, despite the fact that she's dating Dickie and doesn't seem to have an especially pleasant personality. She eventually ends up hooking up with Bob instead, which is even more out of the blue.
• Designated Villain: While he's certainly a jerkass, the worst thing that Dickie actually does during the movie is punch out Shecky under the mistaken impression that he's trying to hit on Miss Australia. On top of that, some actually find his jokes kind of amusing in a "so over-the-top vulgar it's hilarious" way, as opposed to Shecky's flat-out awful jokes.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Shecky's outrage at Dickie's shock humor becomes this when you consider that much of Adam Sandler's own later material would make everything that Dickie says and does in this movie look downright tame.
• Humor Dissonance: The movie tries to claim that Shecky has good jokes and would be funny if he worked on his delivery and learned how to play to an audience, while Dickie is a hack who uses over-the-top edginess and vulgarity as a substitute for humor. In practice, however, things are different: while Dickie's jokes aren't funny by any stretch of the imagination, they're so ridiculous and exaggerated that they can wring the occasional laugh out of the audience; in contrast, Shecky's jokes are just unfunny, even after the narrative presents him as having improved.
• Nightmare Fuel: At the end of Shecky's bad dream when Dickie turns into a crude animation, and proceeds to tear out his own eyes.
• Special Effect Failure: That gun Shecky uses to shoot Dickie in one scene. Man, that gun. It looks more like a toy accompanied by a cheesy-sounding gunshot effect.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Billy Bob Thornton seems to be the only actor trying to play a real person, with everyone else either hamming it up as much as possible or stumbling along and trying to improvise.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The fashions and hairstyles make it abundantly clear that this movie was filmed in the 80s.

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